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Feed by M. T. Anderson
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Showing 1-5 of 103 (next | show all)
Feed is a rare book. There are only a handful of books I've read that I can say have hit me in the gut. Brave New World would be one such book. Heart of Darkness would be another. In my view, Feed is in that league.

Feed is not an easy book to read. I don't mean that in the sense that the writing is dense or the plot difficult to follow. Feed is extremely readable in that respect. I mean it is a difficult pill to swallow. It is an unflinching examination of our consumer culture. It is an unapologetic evisceration of youth culture. A lot of people would dismiss Feed after reading those two lines as a mere political statement or an agenda-pusher. That would be a mistake. Feed is not a partisan book. It is not advocating a world-view. It is showing us a mirror without the rose-colored glasses we cling to, myself included.

We are getting dumber. We don't read. We don't think. We listen to the news we are spoonfed and still manage to ignore anything unpleasant. We are poisoning our environment and slowly killing ourselves. The internet is raising a generation that bring up meaningless facts but cannot provide a shred of context to them. Corporations tell kids what is cool and they embrace advertising propaganda without a second thought. We are self-centered and shallow and we project these as virtues to our children. These are all true statements. I'm not a doomsayer, and I would argue we are actively resisting these effects in many ways. I'm not a radical, and I would argue these problems are not as bad as they seem. I believe both of those things wholeheartedly. But a small part of me can't deny the painful truth of Feed: Our world is not as different from the hell Anderson paints as we would like to believe. I hate Anderson's portrayal of what our society will become. But try as I might, I can't give a single reason why he's wrong.

Feed is not for the faint of heart. It is brutally honest.

Now that that's out of the way, I wonder why this book isn't more popular. I can't help but compare it to the award winning Little Brother by Cory Doctorow. Little Brother was up for a Hugo this year. When Feed was written a few years ago, it was virtually ignored. Both are in the young adult category, so it wasn't an issue of audience. Don't get me wrong, I loved Little Brother. But after reading Feed, I can only view Little Brother as a very naive version of 1984. Little Brother argues that technology and youth will save us from ourselves. Feed does what all powerful dystopian fantasies should do: It argues we are hurtling toward our own destruction and nothing will save us, least of all youth or technology, which are a large part of the problem. Little Brother lacks a lot of its punch after reading Feed. ( )
  SendersName | Dec 1, 2009 |
(I originally wrote this review on April 11, 2003 for Amazon.)

Satire may soar over the heads of young readers:

Imagine instant-messaging your friends in your mind. Imagine all those obnoxious computer pop-up ads happening right in your brain. Imagine retailers knowing precisely what you've ever bought, your favorite color, your shoe size. Imagine liking it. This is the scary, weird world described in M.T. Anderson's "Feed". Titus and his friends are average middle-class American teenagers of the future. They take for granted the weird convergence of technology, corporate intervention, and mind-control they live with known as a feed. Enter Violet; a girl Titus meets on spring break, a girl who wants to 'fight the feed'.

There are important and compelling issues raised in this novel about advertising, privacy, conformity, individualism and technology. It's a book that demands discussion, explanation and consideration. Unfortunately, I think that much of it may be over the heads of its teenaged target audience. Readers who need things spelled out may be challenged by this book because significant aspects of the setting (and what a grim future it is) are implied, or only mentioned in passing. I think few teenagers will be satisfied with the ending. And fewer still will probably spend much time thinking about the issues in the story after they've put it down. It's too bad that the profanity and few mild references to sexual situations will keep this book out of most classrooms, because it's really a story that deserves to be discussed, especially by young adults.

I do recommend this book for advanced and thoughtful teen readers. Sci-fi fans in particular will enjoy it. Other readers should appreciate the accurate portrayal of teen dating, cliques, jealousies, insecurities and friendships. I hope the larger, more important themes of the book will be grasped as well.
  jbvm | Nov 26, 2009 |
This book blew me away...a complete surprise. I love cautionary tales that are simultaneously subtle and hysterical. Feed, however is also creepy and at times unnerving. M.T. Anderson's has provided his characters amazing, on-the-mark voices. I HIGHLY recommend the audio version as it's produced in a multi-media style that drives home many of the book's philosophies and visions. ( )
  jwcooper3 | Nov 15, 2009 |
The language is incredible. Will scare you to death! ( )
  LynnMK | Oct 24, 2009 |
While the idea of the 'feeds' into the brain raises questions parallel with societal issues of advertising/marketing and teens, Titus, the protagonist, never grows or develops as an adolescent while other around him do and are affected by their situation and circumstances. Prefer Anderson's 'Thirsty' ( )
  jaseD | Oct 13, 2009 |
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Series (with order)
Canonical Title
Original publication date
People/Characters
Important places
Important events
Related movies
Awards and honors
Epigraph
Dedication
To all those who resist the feed-M.T.A
First words
We went to the moon to have fun, but the moon turned out to completely suck.
Quotations
"Everything we've grown up with the stories on the feed, the games, all of that it's all streamlining our personalities so we're easier to sell to."
Last words
(Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)
Disambiguation notice
Publisher's editors
Blurbers

References to this work on external resources.

Wikipedia in English (1)

Feed (novel)

Book description
Titus and his friends are typical middle class teens sometime in the far future. They go to School (TM) which is owned by the big corporations. But mostly they listen to their feed, a smart Internet connection directly connected into their brains. The feed knows what they like, it knows what they want and it knows the coolest thing of the moment. The feed markets products to them constantly and also allows them to have private chats with anyone else any time. Then one night Titus meets Violet, a girl a little off the grid. She didn't get a feed until she was 7 and mistrusts the marketing. Amusingly, her father is a professor of dead languages, like Fortran and Basic. Then one night a hacker protester infects their feeds and they learn something about life without the feed.

Amazon.com (ISBN 0763617261, Hardcover)

This brilliantly ironic satire is set in a future world where television and computers are connected directly into people's brains when they are babies. The result is a chillingly recognizable consumer society where empty-headed kids are driven by fashion and shopping and the avid pursuit of silly entertainment--even on trips to Mars and the moon--and by constant customized murmurs in their brains of encouragement to buy, buy, buy.

Anderson gives us this world through the voice of a boy who, like everyone around him, is almost completely inarticulate, whose vocabulary, in a dead-on parody of the worst teenspeak, depends heavily on three words: "like," "thing," and the second most common English obscenity. He's even made this vapid kid a bit sympathetic, as a product of his society who dimly knows something is missing in his head. The details are bitterly funny--the idiotic but wildly popular sitcom called "Oh? Wow! Thing!", the girls who have to retire to the ladies room a couple of times an evening because hairstyles have changed, the hideous lesions on everyone that are not only accepted, but turned into a fashion statement. And the ultimate awfulness is that when we finally meet the boy's parents, they are just as inarticulate and empty-headed as he is, and their solution to their son's problem is to buy him an expensive car.

Although there is a danger that at first teens may see the idea of brain-computers as cool, ultimately they will recognize this as a fascinating novel that says something important about their world. (Ages 14 and older) --Patty Campbell

(retrieved from Amazon Fri, 24 Apr 2009 07:58:11 -0400)

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